


Carry My Sorrow

by Vitreous_Humor



Series: Fairest and Fallen [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Annunciation, Body Horror, Doubt, Ineffable Bureaucracy (Good Omens), Kissing, Other, Questioning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 00:31:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20023579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vitreous_Humor/pseuds/Vitreous_Humor
Summary: “You shouldn't be so proud, you know.” Gabriel pressed. “It could get you into all kinds of trouble.”Beelzebub tilted zir head.“And what more trouble could I get in to?”“... All right, You've got me there.”***Gabriel puts off doing their job.





	Carry My Sorrow

_1 BC_

_Nazareth, in Galilee_

The Archangel Gabriel had no idea what nausea was. Oh, they could access all the knowledge about it in the universe if they cared to, including how to cause it in others and how to end it with a simple recipe made from common ingredients found in any kitchen, but it never occurred to them to do so. Instead just before dawn, they paced the streets of Nazareth, uncomfortable in the middle region, impatient with almost everything they saw, and still unable to leave.

_Getting to be as bad as Aziraphale,_ they thought angrily. _Might as well start putting things in my mouth and hoping that something good comes out of it._

The problem was that Nazareth was not a terribly large town. Ten minutes after they had left the house with the green door, they were at the far edge of the settlement, and if they didn't want to continue walking into the desert, they had to turn around; then there they were again. The family inside, all except one, were still asleep, and they could imagine that one sitting up in bed, still wondering what on earth had happened.

Gabriel wasn't entirely sure themselves.

Twice more they walked to the edge of town and back again. They was just telling themselves that enough was enough, it was time to go in and get the job done, when they turned and realized that they was being watched.

Across the street from where they stood was a house with a black cross daubed across the door, the job done without care or concern. Gabriel could smell a certain kind of damp rot from the house, something uncared for and left behind. They could hear the buzzing of the flies, and when they turned their head, they saw zir.

Perched on the rail fence in front of the plague house was a small figure wrapped in an unbleached winding sheet. The sheet muffled zir arms and legs, coming up to hood zir head and face. The only things left bare was a flash of watery blue eyes and at the bottom, the very tops of two surprisingly white, surprisingly unblemished feet.

Gabriel hesitated, and reluctantly walked over to where Beelzebub sat, swinging zir feet slightly as Gabriel approached.

“Good morning, fairest,” Beelzebub murmured. “I had not expected to see you on Earth today.”

“Fallen,” Gabriel said with a nod. “Didn't expect to see you either. This is the only plague house in town. A little small potatoes for you, isn't it?”

“Oh no,” averred the demon. “It is small, but it will be mighty. This is only the first.”

Gabriel frowned reflexively.

“I'm here on business,” they said warningly. “Keep your flies on the right side of the street.”

A pair of dark eyebrows rose up.

“Ah. _That_ business. Already?”

“It's our turn first,” Gabriel said defensively. “You'll get yours in a little while.”

Beelzebub nodded.

In Heaven, Gabriel had all the answers. They spent all their time answering questions, providing solutions and creating the little workarounds that were necessary to keep something as vast as Heaven spinning.

On Earth, things were different. Beelzebub had no questions for Gabriel, and after a moment, Gabriel came to lean against the fence where Beelzebub perched, arms crossed over their broad chest. The sun hovered below the horizon, and the last stars hadn't quite given up yet, clinging to the deep blue of the sky.

“Are you up here a lot these days?” they found themselves asking.

Beelzebub's flies, staying politely close to their master, buzzed at a higher frequency, and then a lower one. Gabriel guessed it was like a shrug.

“Sometimes. More humans living together. More opportunities for fury and sorrow. For lust and despair.”

Beelzebub shifted so ze was turned towards Gabriel.

“ _You_ are hung with despair at the moment, fairest. Is that not a sin?”

Gabriel shrugged irritably.

“Not really my department. What about you? Who says that walking around with a few boils and a few decomposers in your wake is so bad?”

Beelzebub hummed, a note of satisfaction in zir voice.

“The grief from the plague, and the sorrow, and what humans do for that sorrow is for hell. These, on the other hand, are only for me.”

One hand, darkly scabbed, reached up to tug zir hood back. Gabriel could now see the bloom of dully red boils across Beelzebub's right cheek, dripping down zir jaw and onto zir neck. They were on the verge of bursting. They must have hurt a great deal.

“For you? I don't understand.”

Beelzebub smiled with one side of their mouth, the unmarked side. Gabriel saw that zir lips were the same color as zir pale skin, terribly dry and peeling.

“Better than armor,” ze said. “People never touch you like this.”

Gabriel frowned.

“Those are a sign that something is wrong. They say that you need help and that you need sympathy and love.” They pronounced the words carefully, with only a vague idea of what they meant, but knowing that they were right.

“Nevertheless.”

They fell silent again. One or the other of them might have gently pushed the sun down, stretching out this odd moment in Nazareth. Neither would admit to it.

Gabriel glanced at the house with the green door. At some point, they had to go back and try again.

They had started so well, appearing in a ray of light that felt so pallid compared to the lightning that they preferred. The _be not afraid_ had kind of done its job, and they were getting ready to deliver the rest when they had actually looked and seen.

_Okay, this says, you're going to have a baby come out of you in-_

_Wait-wait-wait, a baby, what baby?_

You're _a baby, and your mom's only thirty-two? No... nonono, that's not right, can I please speak to an adult? Someone who has at LEAST had 200 years on this..._

_Wait, what do you MEAN you don't live that long anymore..._

It had all gone downhill from there, and they had stormed out to collect themselves.

“You're rolling forward with the virgin concept, I take it.”

Gabriel glanced Beelzebub, a slightly wry expression on their face.

“Buzz, buzz. Your flies sure get around.”

“They do. Why a virgin? Snakes in the cradle, lightning bolts, those are fairly good signs of divinity.”

“Yeah, well, been there, done that for the nephilim. This one's meant to be special.”

That tightening in their middle again, accompanied with a band around their heart. They needed to get this over with and go back to Heaven, away from these strange twinges.

“Untouched,” Beelzebub said, as if trying out the word. “How lonely.”

Gabriel thought about what Beelzebub had said about armor, glancing at the boils on zir face, the rime of filth under zir nails.

“Are you lonely?”

“Of course. But well-armored. The fear of others is a good protection.”

Gabriel told themselves that they didn't like that.

“That sounds like a boast.”

The flies hummed, up and then down.

“You shouldn't be so proud, you know.” Gabriel pressed. “It could get you into all kinds of trouble.”

Beelzebub tilted zir head.

“And what more trouble could I get in to?”

“... All right, You've got me there.”

Another pause.

She was so young. They were all so young. Gabriel felt wrong.

“You think you're so safe.”

“I am, fairest.”

They scowled at the mocking edge in zir voice.

Of course it was irritation at zir pride that made them reach for zir. Of course it was, and nothing else.

Gabriel extended their hand slowly, watching for white teeth that bit or that terrible spear that Beelzebub had wielded like a toy during the rebellion. Instead, ze sat still, and Gabriel's broad hand cupped the side of Beelzebub's face, resting light as a feather over the boils.

“Hurts?” they asked gruffly. They wondered if a tremor went through Beelzebub's slender body, if ze shrugged a little deeper into zir shroud.

“Always. It would hurt more if you struck me.”

“I'm not going to do that,” Gabriel said. “I'm not here to-”

Romans. Biting dogs. Thrown rocks. At the end, a cross on a high and lonely hill, and that girl standing at the foot of it looking up. Of course they were.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” they corrected, and Beelzebub smiled with the unmarked side of zir face. Ze wasn't so fond of pain either, it seemed.

“Liar,” ze said sweetly.

“Shut up,” Gabriel growled.

They leaned in and brushed their lips against Beelzebub's carefully. There was a faint breath of surprise, and then those terribly dry lips were parting for them. Still Gabriel moved carefully aware of how easily the skin there could split and bleed. They ran their tongue along zir lower lip and then the upper, nuzzling a little until they parted.

Beelzebub didn't taste good, but it wasn't as if Gabriel had any sense for that kind of thing anyway. The sense of taste was mostly lost on them, so the kiss, strange and bastard thing that it was, continued as Beelzebub reached out one scarred hand to pet the archangel's dark hair.

“Soft,” ze murmured. “So beautiful.”

Gabriel pulled back, faintly hot in the face and unsure why. Their lips tingled, and as they pulled back, Beelzebub put zir fingertips to zir own lips. There was no expression in zir pale blue eyes, nothing to tell Gabriel whether they had won or lost.

They pushed from the fence, and the sun inched up higher, peeking over the horizon.

“I have work to do,” they said abruptly. “Not everyone can just spend the day sitting on fences and hoping for the worst.”

“I can,” Beelzebub said, but ze dipped their head in acknowledgment. “Fairest.”

“Fallen.”

Gabriel walked back towards the house with the green door. Instead of the feeling that they didn't know was nausea, they focused on the slight tingle that Beelzebub's kiss had left on their lips.

_It means ze needs sympathy, care and love,_ they thought with a scowl. _Not..._

There was a moment.

It was a very short moment, just a fraction of a millisecond, where Gabriel looked around and questioned. If Beelzebub needed. If the girl in the house deserved better than. If they _all_ deserved more.

Another fraction of a second, an archangel would have fallen, and the history of the world would have been very, very different.

Then Gabriel sighed, opened the green door, and entered the house.

_All right,_ they thought. _Take two._

**Author's Note:**

> *I swiped the Fairest and Fallen from Diana Duane's Young Wizard series. Something about them as terms of address, at least for these two, felt right.
> 
> *I have a feeling that Gabriel moves towards he/him pronouns at some point. The character strikes me as aggressively, performatively male by the time the show starts. This is early days.
> 
> *Until I started noodling at this fic, I forgot that the first descendants of Adam lived a lot longer than we do. Gabriel's behind on the times. 
> 
> *This show gave me a whole damn pairing that I love, one that's practically canon, rolling in history and all the stuff that I adore. And yet, here I am.


End file.
